Whether or not we want to admit it, there are bad actors out there trying to use your brand in their fraud campaigns. Ultimately, imposters that use your brand in their spoken messages and spoofed caller IDs are the cause of declining consumer answer rates. But how do you know the best course of action to prevent this type of behavior? We detect when imposters are corrupting your brand and work with carriers and US authorities to shut them down. Furthermore, we continuously monitor robocall and human fraud activity, providing you with detailed intelligence about campaign types, frequency and sources. As Maria Mayo of FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection said, “It’s in businesses’ best interest to consider solutions that will help protect their good name and their loyal customers.” Let’s take a closer look at how to do just that.
In this article, we cover:
How to detect imposter fraud
Statistics show that nearly 50% of the calls people receive are unwanted. According to AARP.org, “Impostor scams are exactly what they sound like — crooks pose as someone (or something) else to try to convince you to send them money. This is the most common form of fraud reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which logged nearly 960,000 complaints about impostor scams in the year ending Sept. 30. 2021. Those cons collectively cost victims $2 billion, an 85 percent increase from the previous 12 months, as scammers sought in record numbers to “capitalize on confusion and concerns around shifts in the economy stemming from the pandemic,” the FTC said in a Dec. 16 statement.
Impostor scams generally start with an unsolicited phone call, email, text or social media message. Fraudsters impersonate people and organizations you would ordinarily trust, or at least hear out. The most common pose involves government agencies such as Social Security, Medicare or the IRS. But crooks might adopt any number of guises, including companies you do business with, charities, a family member or friend, a lawyer or debt collector, or celebrities.”
Fortunately, YouMail has you covered.
Using the industry’s largest independent call sensor network, YouMail listens to billions of live consumer calls and accurately detects brand imposter activity. Patented AI algorithms analyze media and metadata to identify and classify each malicious campaign that uses your brand.
The importance of mitigating fraud campaigns
Our blog from September — How to Block Unwanted Calls and Stop Them From Calling You Back — noted that regardless of whoever or whatever plagues your phone lines and sanity, you have recourse. More than likely your carrier provides some form of call blocking. Block a number and you never need to hear from it again. But that’s a reactive measure.
You need to be attacked at least once in order to prevent it from happening again. And with unwanted callers being so wiley — scammy robocallers in particular — blocking a few phone numbers isn’t going to deter the persistent.
Spammers and scammers are experts at attacking their victims from a variety of phone numbers. Block one, and they will try from another. They’ve got the technology and patience to try again and again. They even share information over the dark internet, passing on your number as particularly vulnerable.
Fortunately, we capture metadata that enables us to trace campaign sources and shut them down. We work directly with USTelecom (industry robocall mitigation agency designated by the FCC) and the telecommunications companies that carry the calls to block them. Our forensics provides the objective evidence that carriers need to stop fraud at its source.
YouMail protects more than 350 million phone numbers, has stopped more than a billion robocalls, and has answered well over 10 billion calls to date. If you need a bouncer for your phone, we’re the muscle you’ve been looking for.
Continuous campaign surveillance
According to onespan.com, “fraud monitoring is the core of a modern fraud prevention strategy. Continuous fraud monitoring is the process of constantly monitoring all actions on a bank account – not just the initial login and ensuing financial transactions such as payments and funds transfers. Continuous fraud monitoring looks at all actions and events, whether they are monetary or non-monetary. This includes things like changes to an account owner’s profile, adding a beneficiary or payee, and device registrations.
When monitoring for suspicious activity, an anti-fraud system must analyze vast amounts of data,
events, and their context in a continuous way to spot anomalies in user behavior patterns. It’s an approach that allows financial institutions to respond in real time to the risk of a threat and stop a fraud attack. Continuous fraud monitoring looks at and analyzes the data related to online and mobile banking sessions, devices, IP addresses, behavior, and all the events that users perform – as they occur – to determine the level of risk.”
YouMail monitors all fraud activity that involves your brand, providing detailed analysis by campaign type, frequency and sources. We alert you when new campaigns are detected and when activity levels change.
If you’re ready to get started protecting your brand, there’s no better time to start than right now. Sign up for a YouMail Professional Plan today.
